Learning Rangoli

Nothing about this tradition survives by accident. Every design on every threshold is the visible end of a chain of teaching that runs back generations — a chain made of watching, copying, repeating, and correcting rather than of books. This chapter describes that chain: how the hand learns, what the recurring beginner’s difficulties are, and how traditional instruction answers them. The craft mechanics themselves live in the Techniques chapter, and the question of who carries the chain — the custody rather than the pedagogy — in A Women’s Art; here the subject is learning — the tradition’s quiet engine.